R
OSA WAS STANDING ON
the balcony of the study with its wrought-iron balustrade, looking out over the inner courtyard and the rooftops to the peak of the mountain, when the telephone rang.
It wasn’t the phone on her desk. This one had a ringtone unlike any that she had yet heard in the palazzo.
The muted, almost inaudible sound came from the wall paneling on the west side of the room. It was a
genuine
ring, very old-fashioned, not a trendy modern tone. She’d never heard it except in old movies and as a ringtone to download on a cell phone. But something told her that there was no cell phone concealed in the wall.
After a minute, during which she groped around more and more frantically for hidden mechanisms, the sound stopped. She cursed quietly, but she didn’t give up. Finally she tried the obvious and, sure enough, found a panel at chest height that could be slid aside with the palm of her hand. It disappeared behind the panel next to it with a faint sound. A secret door came into view lower down on the wall.
Behind it, the phone began to ring again.
The door wasn’t locked. Ducking low, Rosa slipped through it and found herself in a tiny room less than six feet square.
It contained a high-backed armchair and a round table, on which an old-fashioned, snow-white telephone stood. It had a round dial and an enormously heavy receiver. The casing of the phone looked like ivory or mother-of-pearl.
She picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Good day.”
“Trevini?” She dropped into the chair. “What kind of a phone is this?”
“One so outmoded that Judge Quattrini’s people and everyone else who’d like to listen in have forgotten how to bug it. Officially the cable network we’re using doesn’t exist anymore. But certain persons in, let’s say, high places made sure, when the system was modernized a few decades ago, that parts of it were left in place all over Sicily. The authorities know nothing about it. Or if they do, they would be greatly disappointed if they tried tapping into it with their ultramodern digital stuff.”
“Why didn’t you say anything about this before?”
“To find out how much you know about the secrets of the palazzo.” Which told her that there must certainly be others that he wasn’t telling her about. Demonstrating his superiority, the bastard.
“What do you want?”
“I want to help you.”
“Sure you do.”
“No, listen, Rosa. This is something you ought to take seriously.”
She shifted in the uncomfortable chair. Traces of dust
were left on her black clothes.
“And I would be glad,” he said, “if, when you hear what I’m calling about, you do not hang up.”
She could have done it there and then. She had a good idea what this was all about. Or whom.
“In all probability,” said Trevini, “it was Alessandro Carnevare who contracted for the murder of his relations in New York.”
A startled lizard scurried over the wall of the secret room and disappeared into a tiny hole in the corner.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he continued. “Can’t the old fool keep quiet for once? How often is he going to try to discredit Alessandro?”
“I wouldn’t have put it that politely.”
“One of the things you pay me for is to tell you unwelcome truths, to your face. And this has nothing to do with my personal dislike of young Carnevare. It’s a fact that instructions for the killings came from Italy. Michele Carnevare himself only just escaped an attempt on his life two days ago, and his people succeeded in following the trail back—to someone who was a leading figure in the transatlantic drug trade for many years. A certain Stelvio Guerrini. Not a name you need to remember, and he hasn’t played a very active role for some time. Anyway, he sent the killers on behalf of a third party. And Guerrini was a close business partner of Baron Massimo Carnevare—Alessandro’s father.”
“That proves nothing at all.” Her own composure surprised her. Was it because she didn’t believe him? Or because
she had already guessed it, even though Alessandro had denied it? “Any family in Sicily could have contracted this Guerrini to get rid of Michele.”
“Yes, to be sure. Except no one but Alessandro seems to have any reason to wipe out the whole New York branch of the Carnevares. A single contract killing, yes, that would be possible. But attempted assassination of the entire leadership of the American Carnevares? That amounts to an open declaration of war, and there’s no one who would risk that, not these days. At the moment most of the families have other anxieties to deal with on their own doorsteps. A clan feud carried out across the Atlantic causes more uproar than most can stomach.”
“Do you have any proof of this?”
“Rosa, you and I are not the police. I have no interest in convicting Alessandro Carnevare of a crime. That would be rather foolish, don’t you think?”
The receiver shook slightly as she held it to her ear. She clutched it more firmly.
“But the way it looks, he lied to you if he said he had nothing to do with those deaths. Do you understand? What makes you so sure that he hasn’t done the same before? Or since?” The attorney’s tone of voice was sharper now. “He walks over other people’s corpses, and he’ll always keep secrets from you. You mustn’t trust him. Whatever he says—it could
all
be lies.”
“Because you happen to have heard a few rumors?”
“In case of doubt—yes. Those murders are a fact. So is the origin of the orders to have them carried out. It all points the
same way. And it’s not over yet. First it was Michele’s brother Carmine, then several of his cousins. And since the failed assassination attempt on Michele, two more Carnevares have been killed.” She heard paper rustling at his end of the line. “Now the targets are openly the younger ones. Thomas Carnevare, who couldn’t even speak Italian. He was only twenty. And Mattia Carnevare was—”
“Mattia?”
“You know him?”
“How did he die?”
“The body was burnt. Not much more is known about it. Found in a pile of garbage in Crown Heights. That’s a part of—”
“Brooklyn,” she whispered.
“Of course. You know your way around there.”
“Mattia wasn’t murdered by any contract killer,” she said. “That was done by Michele himself.”
Trevini said nothing for a moment. Maybe he expected an explanation. She wasn’t going to give him one. Had Mattia been murdered that night? Had he managed to escape the others at the boathouse, only to be killed later?
“What do you know about it?” asked the attorney.
“Only that Mattia Carnevare’s death has nothing to do with Alessandro. It was a punitive operation within the family.”
Trevini muttered something angrily to himself. Then he said, “Did you tell Alessandro Carnevare about the furs?”
“No.”
“I can only pray that you’re telling the truth. That boy is obsessed with revenge—first for his mother’s death, then for what Michele Carnevare did to you. Who knows what would happen if he knew that the skins of his family were lined up on coat hangers in your cellar.”
Rosa stared at the blank wall. She would have liked to get to her feet and prowl around the room, but the damn Stone Age phone had too short a cord for that.
“Stay out of this,” she said, and was horrified to hear the tremor in her voice. “Alessandro is my business. Nothing to do with anyone else.”
“I’m afraid you delude yourself. There’s more at stake here than the question of who you’re necking with.”
She wasn’t letting him destroy her relationship with Alessandro. No one could do that.
“It’s about the family,” he said. “The inheritance that you accepted. Your father’s legacy.
That
ought to matter to you.”
“My father’s not in his grave.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I opened his casket. There’s nothing but bricks inside.”
There was a long silence at the other end of the line.
“No good advice?” she asked after a while.
“I’m considering it. And that you ought to be putting your mind to more important matters than—”
“Than the fact that my father’s fucking casket is empty?” she shouted. Whether she liked it or not, she couldn’t help going on in the same furious tone. “You can drop the tone of superiority, Trevini! And your warnings and predictions and
all that garbage, too. We have a deal. If I need your paternal advice, I’ll call and ask for it. Meanwhile, you can stop snooping around about Alessandro.”
He stayed calm, which infuriated her even more. Pure calculation, of course. She could sense it even over the phone. “Just as you like, Rosa.”
“And I want you to let Valerie go free.”
“Have you thought about that carefully?”
“We don’t need her anymore.”
“Don’t forget what she did to you.”
“That’s my business, okay?”
He seemed to bring his mouth closer to the receiver, because now he was whispering, although his voice was no quieter. “You don’t remember that night, I believe?”
“You’ve seen the police files, haven’t you?”
“I know a great deal more than just those files.”
“What do you mean?”
He cleared his throat. “Remember the video I sent you?” He paused, as if he actually expected an answer to that. “There’s also a second one. When we picked up your friend, she had another cell phone with her. She’d obviously stolen it from Michele Carnevare before setting off for Europe. And there was a video on that phone, too.”
For a moment Rosa could hardly breathe.
“I wanted to spare you this,” he said. “Believe me, I really did.”
“Are you saying that…that he filmed it?”
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t know which was worse: that a video of her rape existed, or that Trevini had watched it. Cold flowed through her body at breakneck speed.
She managed to speak only by concentrating very hard. It sounded as if someone else were talking for her, like a ventriloquist with a dummy. “Send it here,” she said. Getting the words out took half an eternity. “I want to see it.”
“Why would you wish to subject yourself to that?”
“To find out what
you
saw.”
“This is not about our differences of opinion, Rosa. I don’t think it would be good for you to—”
“Send me that cell phone. Actually, send them both.”
“If you insist.” He seemed to want to give her a chance to change her mind. When she didn’t, he said, “And what am I to do with the girl?”
“She can go.” Rosa’s vocal cords threatened to freeze up, but in a way that she didn’t understand, she managed to keep the transformation under control. “I don’t want to see Val ever again. Put her in a taxi to the airport. And you’d better book her on a flight to Rome, or New York, or wherever she wants.”
“I’ll see to it that she disappears.”
“No one’s to touch a hair on her head. I am
not
giving orders to have her killed.”
“I understand perfectly.” His own voice sounded mechanical now.
“Give her some money, enough to last her a week or two, and charge it to me.”
“I really hope she’ll appreciate that.”
“Just as long as she’s gone.”
“And you think that will soothe your conscience?”
“You don’t understand. I’m not talking about my conscience.”
“No?”
“If I watch that video,” she said quietly, “it could change my mind.”
“You want to protect her? From yourself, Rosa?” He laughed quietly. “It’s your sense of responsibility, then. You don’t want to have to make a decision that you’d regret later.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t regret it at all. Maybe I’d suddenly realize that I
like
making those decisions.” The power over life and death. The power wielded by her ancestors.
“Until now, I thought you were only running away from yourself,” he said gently. “But in reality you’re running away from the ghost of Costanza.”
She said nothing until, at long last, he hung up.
“M
ATTIA IS DEAD,” SAID
Alessandro that evening, before Rosa could say a word about her conversation with Trevini.
She was holding a steaming double espresso, not her first of the day, and her whole body felt as if creatures of some kind were scrabbling under her skin.
They were standing on the terrace of the Palazzo Alcantara, with its panoramic view over the olive groves and out to the west. The tall palm fronds rising to the sky in front of the stone balustrade rustled in the darkness, and the pump of the swimming pool gurgled quietly, the light of the underwater lamps bathing part of the west facade in wavering brightness. The mild evening air was filled with the song of the cicadas.
“They found his body yesterday,” said Alessandro. “Burnt, lying in a Dumpster.”
“In Crown Heights.”
“You know about it?”
“Trevini called. He told me.”
Slowly, he nodded. “And of course he tried to pin the blame on me.”
Rosa emptied her cup of coffee in a single gulp, and placed it on the top of the balustrade. “Is he right? Did you have anything to do with it?”
“You’ve already asked me that question. And I answered you.”
“Were you telling the truth?”
“Would you sooner believe Trevini than me?”
“Oh, come on. I can’t just leave it hovering in the air between us.”
He sighed gently and looked out at the plain again. The countryside was almost immersed in night. Miles away, the lights of a village glinted. Up in the starlit sky, the signal beams of a solitary airplane blinked on and off as it flew silently north.
“When I told you that I had nothing to do with the assassinations, you said—”
“I said it was too bad. I know.”
“Did you mean it?”
She nodded without hesitation. “Do you think I’ve never wished them dead? I’ve hoped, often enough, that they’d perish miserably.”
“It’s possible that Mattia was still alive when they set fire to him.”
She took his hand, and gently drew him close. “He wasn’t there. Mattia wasn’t one of them.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Could she be sure? What would she see on the second video? Who would she recognize? Only Michele and Tano? At the moment, she wasn’t certain if she would ever watch it.
Alessandro’s gaze was grave and dark. “Did you ask Mattia? Or did he deny it on his own?”
“Neither.”
“Then you don’t know that he was innocent.”
“He saved my life!”
“And I’m not responsible for his death. Whatever Trevini claims.”
Had she really thought that Alessandro was lying to her? She fought down her guilt. “Okay,” she said after a while. “Who was it, then?”
His expression told her that he was reluctant to give her the truth. Rosa saw the trouble in his eyes. She stroked his hair and kissed him, just because all of a sudden she felt like it.
“The Hungry Man,” he said.
“I thought he was still in prison.”
“As if that ever stopped any
capo
from handing out death sentences.”
“But why would he do that? What business of his are your American relations?”
“His business is mainly to do with me.”
She stared at him. The grief in his eyes, the sorrow in his voice touched her. And slowly, she began to see where all this was going.
“The Hungry Man will soon be out of prison,” he went on. “That’s not just rumor; it’s only a matter of time. Someone in high places—very high places—has seen to it that the inquiry into his appeal was reopened. And everyone can guess the outcome.”
The Hungry Man—everyone called him that; no one used his true name—had been the predecessor of Salvatore
Pantaleone, the
capo dei capi
whom Rosa had known. For decades he had ruled the Sicilian Mafia with an iron fist, until he was brought to trial and imprisoned almost thirty years ago. He had been as good as forgotten for a long time, and then, a few years earlier, new rumors began circulating. Ever since, it had been said that the return of the Hungry Man was imminent, that he had influential allies in all the European centers of power, people who ensured that the verdicts condemning him for the worst of his crimes were overturned and sentences for the other charges shortened. Pantaleone was dead; the position of
capo dei capi
was vacant. Who would be the new boss of bosses? Power struggles were going on within Cosa Nostra, but no one had nominated himself for the post. They all seemed to fear the Hungry Man, and no one wanted to risk standing in his way if he really did come back to Sicily to reassert his old claim.
He had given himself the title of the Hungry Man, proclaiming that he was the reincarnation of the ancestor of all the Arcadian dynasties—King Lycaon, the tyrant who, according to legend, had been turned by Zeus, father of the gods, into the first to change between human and animal form. With him, all the other inhabitants of Arcadia had been condemned to the same fate. And so the Panthera were born, the Lamias, the Hundinga, and all the other shape-shifters who had been dispersed around the world after the downfall of Arcadia, but maintained the sunken empire’s heritage to the present day.
The Hungry Man, so it was said, wanted to restore the rule of terror of the old Arcadian dynasties. He promised his
followers a return to the bloody excesses of antiquity, when the shape-shifters ruled the kingdoms all around the Mediterranean and feasted to their hearts’ content on human flesh.
Rosa took Alessandro’s hand. “What sort of business does he have with you?”
“He hates my family. For a long time, the Carnevares were closer to him than anyone else, until someone betrayed him, and he blamed us for it.”
“And
did
your family betray him?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, and I don’t think it makes any difference. He swore to take revenge on us more than a quarter of a century ago. And now it’s time for him to demonstrate his new strength. He’s gradually decimating my family—or what’s left of it—beginning with the American Carnevares. With every murder he’s coming closer, and someday it will be my turn.”
How long had Alessandro known about this? What he and she had between them was still too fragile to withstand so many secrets. When would the moment come when the strain was too much for it?
“You’re right at the end of his hit list?” she asked, her voice husky.
He nodded. “At least that’s what I assume.”
“How many people has he had killed already? Only Michele’s brother and cousins, or others as well?”
Maybe he was sorry now that he had told her the truth. But she gave him credit that he hadn’t tried soothing her with evasions. Another reason why she was so attracted to him.
“One of my second cousins was shot in Catania the day before yesterday,” he said. “And two more in Palermo. Unless there’s someone else behind that, his killers have reached Sicily.” He rubbed his nose, but it wasn’t the knowing gesture with which he sometimes riled her; this time it seemed to be nervousness. “He wants me to panic. Maybe strike out blindly around me, as my father or Cesare would have done. He’d probably like it if I tried to blame other families for the murders and started a clan feud. That would suit him very well. He’d only have to watch us weakening each other, and then he could seize power over all the clans.”
“What are you going to do?”
“The obvious thing would be to summon all the Carnevares. But I’d sooner die than ally myself with someone like Michele. Not after everything he did to you.”
Maybe she should have asked him not to take her feelings into consideration. But instead she kissed him again, this time harder, and for a while neither of them said a word, not even when their lips parted and they looked at each other.
“It’s not my turn yet,” he said. “He’s probably enjoying the idea of the murders spreading fear and terror among the Carnevares too much for that. He’ll take his time before his killers turn their attention to me. But that’s not what worries me.”
She raised one hand and stroked his cheek and throat. She just wanted to be close to him, very close.
“I’m afraid for you,” he said.
“I’m not a Carnevare.”
“Word of our relationship has spread. There’s a hotbed of
rumor seething, and we haven’t gone to any trouble to counter that. I still thought danger loomed from the other clans and our own people. But now…” He stopped, kissed the palm of her hand, bent her fingers into a fist, and closed his own hand around it. “Now it’s possible that the Hungry Man has you in his sights.”
“Me?”
He nodded. “If he wants to get at me, if he’s really hell-bent on injuring the
capo
of the Carnevares, then he’ll have to take you away from me. He’ll try to kill you, Rosa.”
“Nonsense,” she contradicted him, but even as she spoke, she realized that he was right. There was a long tradition in the Mafia of attacking an enemy by murdering all his loved ones. Obviously she would be on the Hungry Man’s hit list herself.
“So now?” she whispered.
“I don’t want you going anywhere without bodyguards,” he said. “And I don’t mean those rustics from Piazza Armerina. You need a security service. Specialists who know what they—”
“Hey, hey, hey,” she gently interrupted him, putting a finger to his lips. A smile stole over her face. “I don’t want gorillas around me day and night, never mind where they come from.”
“But—”
“Where are
your
bodyguards?” she asked. “I don’t see any of them around here. You don’t like going around with a bunch of apes in black suits any more than I do.” She stood on
tiptoe and kissed the end of his nose. “We’re Arcadians. We’ll manage by ourselves.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“Totally senseless.”
“All this is totally senseless. That was obvious from the very first day. Did it stop us?”
His hand was on the back of her neck. He drew her to him again. Her breasts gently brushed his chest, and she felt the nipples harden—as they always did before disappearing and turning to scaly snakeskin. Infuriating.
“I know what we’ll do now,” she said.
At last his radiant smile came back. “You do?”
“To take our minds off it.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“The basement,” she said. “Those furs.”